To fully grasp how so many smart, right-minded people could get it so wrong, it might help to start with a quick review of medical history. Take the radical mastectomy, conceived by William Halsted in the late 19th century. The procedure was intended to remove all cancer cells of the breast, the overlying skin, the underlying muscle and regional lymph nodes. It was mutilating, permanently disfiguring and no more effective than less radical, less disfiguring procedures.
Still, because of the prestige and respect Halsted commanded as a teacher of surgeons, his disciples defended and taught the radical mastectomy at the most revered medical colleges. His extreme procedure was perpetuated for almost a century, until challenges by courageous physicians in Europe and America, along with a prospective randomized study by Dr. Bernard Fisher, finally sounded the death knell of this standardized surgical error of the century.
The 21st-century analogue to this unfortunate chapter is the interventional and pharmaceutical treatment of coronary artery disease. This approach results in significant mortality, morbidity and unsustainable expense. Neither the procedures nor the drugs that accompany them treat the cause. Standard care for coronary artery disease is nothing more than palliative. The purveyors of this treatment acknowledge that it is but a stop-gap therapy. And as in the case of the radical mastectomy, there is a far more effective, cost-effective and sustainable treatment. It's simple: advocate a lifestyle of plant-based nutrition, make a bold leap toward a world free of heart disease and lessen our use of scalpels and drugs.
For the minority of heart patients, specifically those in the midst of heart attacks or acute coronary syndromes, stents or coronary artery bypass may be lifesaving. For the rest, none of the present therapies targets the cause: the Western diet. As a consequence, the disease marches on in all patients, which leads to more drugs, stents and bypasses, increasing heart damage, heart failure and, too often, death.
In 1985, I initiated a study that treated seriously ill patients with coronary artery disease with plant-based nutrition and succeeded in the arrest and reversal of their disease. This program has been published at 5, 12 and 16 years, and most recently summarized at 20 years in my book, "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease," making it one of the longest investigations of its type in medical research. The duration of the study is testimony that patients with coronary disease will adhere to these food changes for decades and beyond. Patients lose weight, blood pressure normalizes, and Type II diabetes improves or resolves, as do angina, erectile dysfunction and peripheral vascular and carotid disease. Angiographic reversal can be striking. Even more remarkable is the sense of control patients achieve when it comes to containing and reversing their disease.
Our success in counseling patients in how to arrest and reverse heart disease is directly related to the time and effort we expend to help them understand the connection between diet and disease. We succeed where others may fail because of attention to detail. The result: Patients report that this is the most significant and enduring medical encounter they have experienced. More importantly, they acquire an understanding of what caused their disease and how they can stop and reverse it.
Contrary to the argument that "patients won't do this," we find that patients rejoice once they understand their disease and how they may halt it. It is condescending to suggest that patients have no interest in healing themselves. Is the problem that they will not follow advice, or how the advice was offered, if at all? One of my surgical mentors used to say, "Inappropriate application of the method is no excuse for its abandonment."
Present cardiovascular therapy has become a standardized error as it does nothing to prevent disease. In the history of our profession, have we ever before developed an expensive, painful, non-therapeutic treatment of the leading killer of women and men, while failing to inform them of the cause of their illness?
The time is long overdue for legendary work. We can hardly be proud of an interventional and drug therapy, which results in death, morbidity, inordinate expense, disease progression and can never halt this food-borne epidemic. Every patient with this disease should be made aware of this safe, simple, enduring option to cure himself or herself. Most coronary disease need never exist, and where it does exist, it need not progress. Present coronary artery disease therapy need not become the radical mastectomy of this century.
Heart disease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heart disease - MayoClinic.com
CDC - DHDSP - Heart Disease Home
Coronary Heart Disease - Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment of ...
You sound less like a doctor based in science and more like a preacher. Tell us more how Dr. Essylstyn walked on water to bring us his vegan diet.
Seriously, how do you reconcile the proven cardio-protective benefits of omega-3 fatty acids found in fish with Dr. Essystyn's insistence that they are "bad" because of saturated fat or something like that?
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cancer/the-china-study-vs-the-china-study/
http://letthemeatmeat.com/post/613456525/vegan-leaders-rip-esselstyn
There are many vegetarians/vegans who are just as unhealthy as meat eaters, because of that. There are also many vegans who do not get complete proteins in their diets.
Think I should stop the pills?
Tell me how you would design a "randomized clinical trial" comparing a vegan diet to the standard Western Diet. Read "Overdosed America" by John Abramson MD to see how Pharma has corrupted medical science. There is OVERWHELMING experimental/epidemiological evidence indicating that a plant-based diet prevents coronary artery disease. Dr. Esselstyn has shown with his work that it can also REVERSE heart disease. Also, check out the work of Robt. Vogel MD who has done extensive research on the role of diet in endothelial dysfunction.
Dr. Esselstyn is a man of great accomplishment and integrity. His work stands on it's own merit. As time goes on, his stature will grow.
And, here is a quote from this article: "Combining a plant-based diet with medication achieves better long-term results than changing diet alone or combining modest diet changes and
medication" (http://fnadoc.techtrefoil.com/Health/weil_plus/engine2_diet/esselstyn2.pdf)...
Now, I will use this article for my chronic disease course paper about irresponsible practices of some authors who publish "doctored" materials. By all means, I am all for healthy diet AND lifestyle changes (I am a vegetarian myself), but there is no need to confuse people: many of them need cholesterol-lowering meds in addition to all the holistic staff...
I was speaking to a cardiologist last week. He had spect four hours in the left atrium "ablating" to treat and arrrhythmia. When he removed the wire, the rhythm returned to normal. When I asked him; "Was he ablating aberrant nerve pathways (See UCLA group) or aberrant myocyte pathways ?" he did not know. Indeed he did not know what I was talking about.
Autonomic denervation and reinnervation occur in every organ from the inferiro turbinate (in acute allergic rhinitis) to the anal cushions (anal fissures). Much is caused by straining during defecation. DP Burkitt was correct to assert that low calorie, plant-based diets with correct patterns of bowel habit, was the correct route to prevention. To assert that it is the correct means to treatment is not a major step.
Autonomic denervation and the origins of Western diseases, 2010 www.western-diseases.com
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/china-fiction.html
Also for the heart technology first types.I use this product with the diet and the results are dramatic.
The formula is pricey but you can purchase each ingredient separately and cheap to achieve the same results.http://www.towerlaboratories.com/hearttech.html
His colleagues do sent patients to him, but only after they've had all the bypass surgeries and drugs possible nothing more is available. At this point Dr Esselstyn still has a huge success rate in treating them through a plant-based diet.
Great work being done by Dr. Esselstyn. He book is very hopeful. One of the best I've read on the subject.
Yes,but how is that measured?
And drink a milkshake now and then.